


Instructions Are For Obeying

by Kinkatia



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Heartbreak, I'm Sorry, M/M, there was a prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-11
Updated: 2013-09-11
Packaged: 2017-12-26 06:35:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kinkatia/pseuds/Kinkatia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil knows there are grave punishments for disobeying instructions. </p>
<p>Carlos is too curious for his own good.</p>
<p>The Sheriff's Secret Police have laws to enforce.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Instructions Are For Obeying

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Do Not Push - A Gotye Call Me Maybe Mashup by Pomplamoose](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/27298) by PomplamooseMusic. 



> This is rushed, poorly written, and unbeta'd. I don't care, I had to get it out of my head before it consumed my entire existence. Enjoy or not, is up to you. <3

No one asks where. We all know. Speak not of it, lest you go there as well.

Welcome to Night Vale.

Listeners. Oh, dear, sweet listeners. Something terrible has happened, and I fear it is all my fault. 

Yesterday, having received approval for overnight guests, I asked Carlos over to my apartment. To my utter joy and delight, he said yes. I was going to make a romantic, wheat and wheat by-produce-free dinner, and he was going to choose a movie for us to watch, and it was going to be wonderful.

But shortly after he arrived at my home, there was a knock on the door. You know the one: two great booming thuds, followed by exactly fourteen grim taps. Carlos seemed unbothered, but I--Listeners, I was terrified. Cautiously, I opened the door. There, on the doormat, was a small box, perfectly cuboid and made of corrugated cardboard. Taped to the top was a piece of paper with my name and address written in beautiful calligraphy. As is mandatory when anonymous packages arrive at your doorstep, I picked it up and took it inside.

Carlos, perfect and beautiful and ever the scientist, convinced me to--to open it.

Listeners, would that I had not opened that box. All that followed could have been prevented, had I not given in to Carlos's warm tones and gentle curiosity. "What's in the box?" he asked. 

"I do not know," I answered, my voice trembling.

"Well, open it and find out."

"I probably shouldn't," I said.

"Come on, I'm curious." He smiled at me, and his smile was radiant. How could I resist that smile? How could I continue to say no? 

Inside the box, wrapped carefully in bubble wrap in which all the bubbles had been popped, was a small wooden box with a single red button in the center. Attached to the button was a string, from which hung a small, handwritten tag reading simply, "Do not push."

The sensible thing to do, as I'm sure you all know, Listeners, when presented with something like this, would have been to return the button to the box, take it out into the Sand Wastes, and bury it in the shadow of a cactus blooming by the light of the full moon. 

Carlos is so smart, so incredibly smart, but I'm sad to say, Carlos is not always very sensible.

"Push it," he said.

I stared at him in shock! How could he suggest such a thing? The button came with clear instructions, and to disobey those instructions would bring unknown consequences down upon us!

"No," I told him. "No." I said that. To Carlos. To deny a request from Carlos is to deny air for my lungs.

"Please?" Carlos asked. "For science?"

"I can't," I replied. 

He reached across to me, covered my hand with his, and while my heart did acrobatics, he smiled and said, "For me?"

I could not speak. Carlos was asking the impossible, the highly irresponsible, and I-- For the briefest of moments, I was tempted. I nearly gave in. 

Through a great effort of will, I shook my head.

And then-- _and then_ , Carlos did the  _unthinkable_. He  _took_ the button from my hand. Then he  _ran_  into the next room with it. I had to  _chase_ him, and we  _fought_ over that button, and it would have been endearing and fun had not serious and unknown consequences hung in the balance. I was eventually able to get it back, and I said to Carlos, "Please, Carlos, just let it be." _  
_

He looked at me for a long time. I don't know how long it was. Then he sighed and said, "Alright."

I put the button back into the box, sealed the box, and hid it in the back of the pantry. "Keep this safe for me," I whispered to the Sheriff's Secret Policeman that was hiding amongst my canned goods. "I'll bury it in the Sand Wastes tomorrow."

The entire episode put a damper on the rest of the night, to say the least. We ate dinner in mostly silence, watched the movie with a solid five inches of space between us on the sofa, and when we went to bed. . . We each kept to our own side.

It took me a long time to fall asleep. Carlos was there with me, right by my side, and yet so far away. It was nothing at  _all_ like I imaged our first night together to be. 

I know I was fell asleep because I was awoken some time later by a terrible racket from the living room. Loud thuds, and Carlos's beautiful voice crying out in  _pain_. I jumped out of bed, got tangled in the blankets, fell over, worked my way free of the infernal bedding, and rushed out of the bedroom. 

Oh, Listeners. The sight I was greeted with. I cannot even begin to describe it. No, I really can't. The Sheriff's Secret Police threatened me with dislocation of several joints and thirteen hours in a room filled with tiny yapping dogs and venomous snakes if I mentioned so much as one word of what I saw when they pulled a hood over Carlos's head and dragged him, struggling, from my apartment. I tried to stop them, to convince them that they were mistaken, but one of the Sheriff's Secret Policemen hit me, knocking me to the ground, and by the time my head stopped ringing they were gone. 

All that was left was the empty corrugated cardboard cube, and, lying in the middle of my apartment, the red button, which had been pressed.

I do not know what has become of Carlos, dear Listeners. I do not know what I should do now. I feel as if this is somehow my fault. If I had only impressed the danger of disobeying the instructions that come with anonymous packages left on your doorstep onto his mind, if I had gone to the trouble to give examples of such disobedience in the past, if I had just gone out to the Sand Wastes then and there, and buried that god-forsaken box, all would be well. I would have awoken this morning next to Carlos, and--

I'm sorry, Listeners. I'm sorry, I--

I have to go to the weather.

 


End file.
